[8] As from 2020 original members Mick Bower, Brian Vaughton, Gavin Webb and Rick Harrison performed as the Masters Apprentics with Bill Harrod on bass guitar and Craig Holden on lead vocals.
[1][2] The band's output was profoundly influenced by the Australian tour of the Beatles in June 1964, which had a particular impact in Adelaide due to recent migrants from the United Kingdom.
[2] Their original manager, Graham Longley, made a tape recording of a rehearsal;[2] it was rediscovered and released on CD in 2004 as Mustangs to Masters ... First Year Apprentices.
[2] They built a following with local teenagers, including migrants from the UK, which were an early influence on the band as they were directly in touch with current mod fashions, not as widely known in Australia.
Their debut single, "Undecided" / "Wars or Hands of Time", was released in October and gradually climbed the Adelaide charts thanks to strong support from local DJs.
[19] Returning to Adelaide, the band recorded more original songs, including Bower's "Buried and Dead",[20] which became their second single, plus other tracks which were later on their debut LP album.
[22] The group became established as one of Melbourne's top attractions, performing regularly at discos like Catcher, Sebastians, the Thumpin' Tum and the Biting Eye and at a multitude of suburban dances.
[1] The success of the new single elevated the band as teen idols, but as pressures mounted lead guitarist Rick Morrison was forced to quit after passing out on stage during a concert in June 1967, suffering a collapsed lung.
[2] In September 1967, while touring Tasmania, the shy and sensitive Bower was found in his room in extreme distress, the promoter insisting they had to perform; faced with the prospect of going unpaid and being stranded in Hobart, they complied.
[2] Bower was dressed, taken to the concert and pushed on stage with his guitar around his neck; he stood motionless through the gig, arms hanging limp, and was hospitalised immediately after, suffering a severe nervous breakdown, and was ordered to give up performing.
Someone from the university then presented me with the key, to thunderous applause by the vast crowd, and we jumped out, slung on our guitars and blasted into the most acid-inspired sounds we could muster.
[28]Newest member, Harrison quit immediately after these concerts and upon returning to Melbourne they recruited another lead guitarist, Peter Tilbrook from Adelaide band, The Bentbeaks.
Keays then approached Doug Ford, an innovative electric guitarist from the second line-up of Sydney garage rock band The Missing Links and its offshoot Running Jumping Standing Still.
After the Hoadleys final, the manager of co-sponsor Sitmar cruise line, who had voted for them, offered the band a working trip to UK, with free passage in exchange for performances.
Keays was interviewed by Go-Set staff reporter, Lily Brett and the 'expose' was printed on 17 July 1968, headlined "Sex is thrust upon us",[32] the article and its follow-up, "Whose breasts are best?
The band played hundreds of concerts during the year, touring around country Australia, visiting interstate capitals and dashing between dance venues around greater Melbourne.
When they played at the annual Moomba concert in March at the Myer Music Bowl, they drew a crowd of just under 200,000 people, second only to The Seekers' record-breaking appearance there two years earlier.
Also in July, with "5:10 Man" climbing the charts, they had their next attempt at the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, and once again they were runners-up—although this time they ran such a close second to Doug Parkinson in Focus that they were also offered the same prize, a trip to UK with the Sitmar line.
Wheatley was dragged offstage by the audience and had his pants and coat literally torn to shreds, with the result that one of the police on hand threatened to arrest him for indecent exposure if they did not finish playing immediately.
Based in a terrace house office in Drummond St Carlton, Drum began by handling the band's own management but within a few months it was also booking and promoting gigs for The Sect, Ash, Lovers Dream, Big Daddies, Thursday's Children, Looking Glass, Daisy Clover, Nova Express, Company Caine, Plastic Tears, Little Stevie, Tamam Shud, Jeff St John, The Flying Circus and fourteen other acts, as well as promoting tours by overseas acts The Four Tops and Paul Jones (ex-Manfred Mann).
The album also includes their own version of "St John's Wood", a track Ford and Keays wrote[37] for Brisbane band The Sect, who had released it as a single on Columbia during the year.
Freed from constant performing, they immersed themselves in the cultural life of London, going on shopping sprees for clothes in Kings Road, Chelsea, ploughing through scores of new records and doing the rounds of clubs and concerts, seeing the best music on offer.
A breakthrough gig at Chequers in Sydney allowed the tour to gain momentum, helped by a lengthy profile in the magazine POL, written by freelance journalist Howard Lindley.
In May 1971, John Halsall called from London to inform them that Choice Cuts was receiving glowing notices in the English music press, including a rave review in Melody Maker.
Designed and painted by Keays, it was evidently a dig at the UK and featured a grotesque psychedelic caricature of a bulldog's head wearing a Union Jack eye patch, its ears are skewered by an arrow from which dangles a tag emblazoned with the album's title.
In late 1974 Keays embarked on his ambitious concept LP, Boy from the Stars, which was premiered at the final Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1975, where his all-star backing group was joined by Wheatley, recently returned from the UK, in their last performance together for over ten years.
Under Wheatley's guidance, Farnham staged a spectacular comeback as an adult pop artist when Whispering Jack became the biggest-selling locally produced album in Australian recording history.
Mick Bower, Gavin Webb, Brian Vaughton and Rick Morrison joined with Rob Pippan, Ian Politis, Nannette Van Ruiten, Matt MacNamee and vocalist Craig Holden to perform songs from various eras of the band.
Like their contemporaries The Easybeats and The Twilights they tried to break into the UK music scene, and one of the later members of the band, Glenn Wheatley, learned valuable lessons from their travails.
They started out as an instrumental band, rose to prominence during the mid-Sixties "Beat Boom", moved through psychedelia and bubblegum pop, finally becoming one of the first and best Australian progressive/hard rock groups of the early Seventies.